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The Game

Email3,518 views | The Game The Game is an innocent little real-life social meme… well, it WAS until it enveloped the Earth in its dark grasp of doom. Nowadays, The Game is an evil tyrant, constantly peering over the shoulders of the working class using its ever-watchful eyes

Yeah, But It’s Not Really a Recipe If You Don’t List Quantites

Pointless, Redundent, Only Something Real Geeks Would Care About (We’re Talking About Lost Trivia, Not “The Game”)

She Lost The Game, But She Won Our Hearts
Just The Facts
1.You are always playing The Game.
2.When you think about The Game, you lose The Game.
3.If you lose The Game, you must announce that you have lost the game.
4.Once you have forgotten about The Game again, you are prone to losing it again.
5.Once you have started playing The Game, THERE IS NO ESCAPE.
Origins– It Evolved From Polar Bears. No, Seriously.
In 1863 Russian writer Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote “Winter Notes on Summer Impressions” which contained the line: “Try to pose for yourself this task: not to think of a polar bear, and you will. see that the cursed thing will come to mind every minute.” This is believed to be the first Russian plot against America. We here at Cracked are pretty sure that had they thought this out better, the Soviets could have used this old Russian trick to win the Cold War. Thankfully the Soviets were too busy trying to repress their own sexual urges to capitalize on it.

So after eleven decades of thinking about fuckin’ polar bears, someone finally decided to put this little thought through scientific study in a lab. That’s right, in 1987 Daniel Wegner tried to study the ability of people to not think about Polar Bears. Guess what? They fuckin’ thought about Polar Bears.

“I’m Cute… and You Just Lost The Polar Bear Game, Bitch!”

Here’s where we get lost… it seems psychologists call this hyperaccessibility. And we here at Cracked aren’t smart enough to follow along from there. Plus, recently we learned Six Bullshit Facts About Psychology That Eveyone Believes and ever since we’ve been leary of psychology for letting us believe incorrect things about it. But we did come up with one point that brainy scientists would never think of: if people are taking medicine to no longer be depressed, wouldn’t taking a pill for depression remind you that you are depressed and get you thinking about its causes again?

We thought so, so we threw out all our pills and we’ve been fine ever since (this happened fourteen minutes ago).

Meanwhile, the British were devising a separate initiative in pointless gaming that would tie into this concept rather nicely.

In the late 1960’s, a game theorist by the name of John Conway created a game called Finchley Central. Players took turns naming underground (Tube) stations in London. The first person to say “Finchey Central” wins. However, if one named “Finchey Central” particularly early in the game then it was considered a hollow victory. So in principle, one had to find a willing partner with a large memory of tube stations and a willingness to let the game go on quite awhile in the hope that they would be the one to win. This sounds an awful lot like “friends with benefits” to us. You know you want it to continue for a long time, but when one person in the FWB situation says “where is this going” you have both lost the FWB game.

In 1977, members of the Cambridge University Science Fiction Society (AKA The Cambridge Nerd Squad) regularly met at the Horse at a pub to discuss game theory. One member, Richard Pinch, was a disciple of Conway and he introduced it to his geeky friends so they could play it in between games of Dungeons And Dragons. Eventually, the group created a NEW parody by reducing its singular rule to something ridiculously simple, and ridiculously annoying: The first person to think of the game itself would lose.

Little did the Cambridge Nerd Squad realize they were falling for a Russian Trap laid first in 1863. Even littler (yeah, we just dropped “littler” on you) did they realize there would eventually be scientific study to back up the premise behind their game.

These people were put on trial recently for crimes against humanity.

Strategies for Not Losing The Game, Part One
As mentioned earlier, there is no way to “win” the game. However, you can be in an extended state of “not losing” the game for quite a long time. The problem is that you can only realize how well you performed AFTER you have lost the game. Which is a bit like a moral victory, but of course “moral victories” is what losers say to make themselves feel better about being a loser.

Yeah Guys! We Finished Just One Yard Short of A Super Bowl Title!

Strategies for Winning The Game, Part Two
In a constant quest to figure out how to “win” The Game, Games-Theory Sociologists at Kentucky Wesleyan College have theorized one possible way to “win” The Game.

This is called “The Coma Maneuver”

A DEDICATED Player Kicking Ass at “The Game”

The Circle-Hand Game
The Game should not be confused with “The Circle-Hand Game.” The Circle Hand Game outdates “The Game” and can trace its history back to 1929 when the brothers of the City College of New York’s Sigma Alpha Mu Fraternity were searching for a new way to torture pledges without technically breaking CCNY’s anti-hazing rules. The Circle Hand Game is superior to “The Game” in one basic way: if you lose it, you get hit. We here at Cracked only support playing “The Circle Hand Game” if our opponent is ridiculously poor at that game. Otherwise we’re too intellectual to play such a foolish game.

Great! Now You’ve Lost “The Game” and “The CIrcle-Hand Game” Both in The Last Two Minutes.